Teenager caught on bicycle with loaded handgun gets prison sentence

Syracuse, NY - A Syracuse teenager caught with a loaded handgun as he rode a bicycle away from a shots-fired incident was sentenced today to five years in state prison.

Shaquio Cirino, 16, of Cadwell Street, recently pleaded guilty before County Judge William Walsh to a felony count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.

Defense lawyer Ronald VanNostrand asked for some leniency from Walsh, noting Cirino had no prior criminal record and had just made the mistake of riding his bicycle around with a gun after a day of drinking alcohol.

But Walsh interrupted to note the police reports told a different story of the June 16 incident.

The judge said police reported Cirino had been involved in an altercation with the owner of a local store and had threatened to come back with a gun. Police were responding to a subsequent report of shots fired at that same store when they spotted Cirino riding away from the Otisco Street area on a bike.

A loaded 9 mm handgun fell out of Cirino's pants as he was stopped by the police, Walsh noted.

VanNostrand, however, continued to ask for Walsh to consider granting Cirino youthful offender treatment so he will not be "stigmatized" by having a felony conviction on his record.

Walsh rejected the pitch, noting that would not allow him to impose the five-year state prison sentence he promised when Cirino pleaded guilty.

Walsh said he wasn't imposing the sentence to send any kind of message to the community.

"I don't send messages. If I did and they got through, we wouldn't be here," he said. But he said he was responding from the bench to the daily newspaper reports he reads about gun violence in the community.

"Kids are getting gunned down in this community with impunity," he said. And when someone is a "bad shot," the result can be the death of a child, he said in obvious reference to the fatal shooting of a Syracuse toddler last November.

While Cirino qualified for youthful offender treatment,. Walsh said he wasn't going to grant it.